A new plastic ban has banned the use of single-use non-degradable plastic drinking straws in China's food and beverage industry by the end of 2020. However, this has caused widespread discussion and complaints on social media. What are consumers' reactions and what factors influence consumers to choose bio-straws (substitutes for plastic straws) are unclear. Therefore, this research collected 4367 effective comments (177,832 words in total) on "bio-straws" from social media and extracted keywords based on grounded theory to generate questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the consumption intention and influencing factors of 348 consumers regarding the ban. The results indicate the following: (1) consumer opinion on straws can be summarized into five main categories, namely, consumers' user experience, consumer subjectivity, policy awareness, policy acceptance, and consumption intention; (2) consumer subjectivity, policy awareness, and policy acceptance directly affect consumption intention significantly, while user experience affects consumption intention indirectly; and (3) user experience and consumer subjectivity play significant roles in mediating these relationships. From the perspective of consumers, this study provides an important basis for policymakers to formulate single-use plastic alternative policies in the future.
Keywords: Bio-straws; Consumption intention; Grounded theory; Plastic straw ban; Single-use plastic; Structural equation modeling.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.